Snapshots 47 Thunderbolts

Here are 10 developments of interest to fans.

(1) Raise the alarm! Another fact of science we were raised on may be going the way of the… dinosaur. Mark Leeper writes in the latest MT Void:

John Scannella and Jack Horner at the University of Montana have been taking a closer look at  Triceratops fossils and all indications are that a Torosaurus is what a Triceratops grows up to be. They are not two related species; they are a single species seen at two different stages of its development. So are we losing Triceratops as a dinosaur? After all you name an animal for its adult form, not its immature form. On the other hand a lot of people know Triceratops was the animal just like they knew Pluto was a planet. Torosaurus is much less a super-star.

(I expect the 08/06/10 issue with the full text of Mark’s article will soon be posted here. I get my copy of MT Void via a Yahoo group and I don’t know long the lag is between distribution to the list and public posting. )

(2) “The screenplay for Something Wicked This Way Comes was written by Ray Bradbury,” begins an  installment of Roger Ebert’s Overlooked DVD of The Week, “based on his novel, and it’s one of the rare American films to savor the sound of words, and their rhythms. That’s true in the writing, and it’s also true in the acting; Jason Robards, who has the lead in this film, is allowed to use his greatest gift, his magnificently controlled speaking voice, more poetically in this movie than in anything else he’s done in years.”

(3) Even better, there may be a brand new Bradbury movie in our future. Producer John Davis at Fox has optioned the rights to The Martian Chronicles in pursuit of an Avatar-sized payday.

(4) On the other hand, Avatar’s own James Cameron’s will be lending his 3-D expertise to a film be directed by Guillermo del Toro based on H.P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness.

In the Lovecraft tale, a gruesome discovery made during a scientific expedition to the South Pole in the 1930s  hints at the true origin of mankind having come from elder gods from another planet. Bad things happen when those life forms are awakened.

(5) Everyone has heard about the Comic-Con attendee who stabbed another near the eye with a pen after one complained about the other sitting too close. The most idiotic part of CNN’s story was a comment repeated from iReport by a genius who declared this was proof Comic Con needs more room…

(6) The Planetary Society Blog did a nice analysis of how the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) team identified a new crater on the Moon, “one that wasn’t there when Apollo 15 flew over, and which doesn’t correspond to any known human artifact impact site. Therefore it’s a fresh crater that’s formed in the last 38 years.”

(7) Aussiecon 4 announced that the The Australian Horror Writers Association is hosting a masked ball during the Worldcon. It’s $30 for con members if tickets are bought in advance, $40 for anybody who buys at the door. My next comment is not a condemnation of the idea, but I can’t recall a previous example of a paid event like this on Friday night at a Worldcon. I’m less biased against it because committees of smaller Worldcons obviously can’t afford to do everything in the world. Yet I realize I would be resistant to the same idea at a larger Worldcon — the usual fannish paranoia about somebody trying to make money off the holy cow. Possibly misplaced fannish paranoia. But it is what it is.

(8) I guess it’s not stalking when it ends in marriage. Butch Patrick of The Munsters will wed Donna McCall, his “biggest fan”.

The two exchanged phone numbers, talked, and agreed to meet for the first time at “Dracula Con II” in Philadelphia. Next thing you know, they’re engaged.

(9) I enjoyed Jerry Pournelle’s iPhone-inspired reminiscence on Chaos Manor :

Peter Glaskowsky reminds me that I’ve probably wanted one since Dick Tracy. When I looked it up I found that Diet Smith invented two-way wrist radio in the 40’s, but it didn’t become video until 1964, a couple of years after Jane Jetson had her videophone complete with a face mask so she could use it in the mornings before applying makeup… On that score, Heinlein in Between Planets (1951) had worldwide cell phones; the story opens with a telephone call to a phone carried by a student horseback riding in the Wyoming mountains out of a dude ranch. …

(10) Fewer and fewer artists want to take on Al-Qaeda for some reason. Imagine that. Add Frank Miller to their numbers now that he has scrapped his plan to pit Batman against al-Qaeda under the title Holy Terror, Batman!

[The] the newly rechristened Holy Terror will instead feature a protagonist known as The Fixer, a Dirty Harry-like former special ops agent who finds a new purpose for his training when his city is attacked. And unlike Batman, The Fixer is “not a tortured soul”: “He’s a much more well-adjusted creature, even though he happens to shoot 100 people in the course of the story.”

[Thanks for these links goes out to David Klaus, Andrew Porter, Gary Farber and  John King Tarpinian.]

Update 08/21/2010: Included Gary Farber’s credit for the Roger Ebert link.

Another Slow Patch Coming

It’s been a slow summer here at File770.com and another little hiatus is about to begin. I’m leaving for a week at family camp with Diana and Sierra on August 7. One of the advantages (see, I didn’t even put quotes around that word) is that they provide no facilities for connecting to the internet or receiving cell phone calls way up there in the mountains. I will be back online on August 14.

Please water the Internet while I’m away.

2010 Ditmar Award Nominations

The Ditmar Awards recognize excellence in SF, fantasy and horror by Australians.

The nominees in the fan categories interested me, partly because I know a few of them and am happy to see them being honored, and partly because the finalists collectively represent contemporary actifans’ scope of interest.  When the changes to the fan Hugo rules settle out I could see things trending in this direction — not these specific nominees, but the mix exemplified by this list, more mediafans (which wouldn’t bother me) and the persistent presence of quasihemisemidemipros in the fan categories (which always has).

    Best Fan Writer

  • Tansy Rayner Roberts, for body of work
  • Chuck McKenzie, for work in Horrorscope
  • Robert Hood, for Undead Backbrain (roberthood.net/blog)
  • Tehani Wessely, for body of work
  • Bruce Gillespie, for work in Steam Engine Time
  • Best Fan Artist

  • Dave Schembri for work in Midnight Echo
  • Kathleen Jennings for body of work
  • Dick Jenssen for body of work
  • Best Fan Publication in Any Medium

  • Interstellar Ramjet Scoop, edited by Bill Wright
  • A Writer Goes on a Journey (awritergoesonajourney.com), edited by Nyssa Pascoe et al
  • ASif! (asif.dreamhosters.com), edited by Alisa Krasnostein, Gene Melzack et al
  • Australian Science Fiction Bullsheet (bullsheet.sf.org.au), edited by Edwina Harvey and Ted Scribner
  • Steam Engine Time, edited by Bruce Gillespie and Janine Stinson

The full list of 2010 nominees is here.  

[Thanks to Andrew Porter for the story.]

2010 Sidewise Awards

Fans at Reconstruction, the 2010 NASFiC, are enjoying a bumper crop of awards announcements.

The winners of the Sidewise Awards were reported by Petrea Mitchell on SF Awards Watch:

Short Form: Alastair Reynolds, “The Fixation”, from The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume 3, George Mann (ed.) (Solaris)

Long Form: Robert Conroy, 1942 (Ballantine)

And if you click on through you can also see Petrea’s report of the 2010 Chesley Award winners.

The Last Minute

Chicago in 2012 bidder Helen Montgomery is encouraging people to get site selection memberships before the August 9 postmark deadline for mail ballots.

Chicago is unopposed, but Helen offers two arguments for taking the time to vote:

1)  If you are a Friend of the Bid (i.e. you gave us $100 or more), then $80 of that money has been held aside to pay for your conversion to an attending membership – but only if you voteIf you do not vote, you forfeit your automatic conversion to an attending membership.  If you do not vote, you will need to purchase a supporting or attending membership, and we guarantee that will cost more than the voting fee.

2)  Everyone’s voting fee will go to the winning bid (which we hope will be us!) and will be used as the “startup” money for the convention.  The more people who vote, the better the financial position the convention will be in at the start, which helps us do more fun stuff at the convention.

Any Worldcon is anxious to have a solid amount of startup money, and it’s true that only the winner of a two-horse race benefits from a rival’s success at turning out voters who have no interest in a con held in the opposing town.

Yet there’s rarely a push to get people to join a Worldcon at the lowest rate available. Every Worldcon budget I’ve ever seen depends on receiving additional revenue from fans who join later at the graduated membership rates.

I expect Chicago to have a very healthy number of members, eventually, still one must have enough money for publications and other immediate needs and maybe they have reason to be concerned.

Remember, it’s not just a matter of being willing to buy a voting membership to join Chicago — only supporting or attending members of Aussiecon 4 are eligible for those memberships. Aussiecon 4 will be a smaller-than-average Worldcon, of course, and the non-Australian members are the ones more likely to be interested in joining a  Chicago Worldcon, which leaves a lot of fans faced with buying an “unnecessary” $50 supporting membership in this year’s Worldcon for the privilege of joining Chicago at the lowest rate. Aussiecon had around 1100 North American members in June 2010 (see PR 3), compared to over 2500 North American members of Anticipation in April 2009 (see their PR4), so that $50 is a barrier for a lot more fans today than it was a year ago. That’s why it would be no surprise to discover that a lot more fans than usual are putting off the decision to buy a 2012 membership ‘til they’ve decided for sure they’re attending the con.

The full message follows the jump. Continue reading

Aussiecon 4 Extends Site Selection

Aussiecon 4 extended the 2012 site selection mail-in deadline to August 9. The original deadline was July 31. However, the Aussiecon 4 PR with the paper ballot was delayed at the Australian post office. The change was announced about 10 days ago after consultation with the only filed bid, Chicago in 2012 but it may be news to some of you. Go to the website, get the ballot and send off your voting membership if you haven’t already because it will never be any cheaper to join.

Contacting Terry Jeeves

Dave Rowe copied me on Terry Jeeves’ new address (below) saying “Unfortunately, Terry’s condition has regressed to the point where he is unable to write or type, but if fans would drop him a line occasionally and faneds would send him paper copies of their fanzines (even tho’ they won’t get a reply) it will certainly help Terry who did so much for fandom over six decades.”

The address is: Terry Jeeves, Broomgrove Nursing Home, 30 Broomgrove Road, Sheffield S10 2LR, Great Britain

Top 10 Posts For July 2010

News reports from Westercon and the Mythopoeic Conference didn’t quite climb over the MacIntyre mystery as the stories drawing the most interest last month.

Here is the complete Top 10 list of most frequently viewed posts for July 2010, according to Google Analytics.

1. Andrew Porter: Authorities Query Whether Fire Victim Is MacIntyre
2. 2010 Mythopoeic Award Winners
3. Seattle Will Host 2012 Westercon
4. No Parties Please, We’re Marriott
5. At the Pasadena Westercon, Part 2
6. Alexei Kondratiev (1949-2010)
7. At the Pasadena Westercon, Part 1
8. Cheryl Morgan Refused Entry to US
9. Stan Winston Props Up for Bid
10. Ray Bradbury at Comic Con 41

Inception — Not That You Asked

Inception is over 2 hours long — about one hour of the movie I expected to see plus over more than another hour of action-adventure stuff. I won’t include any spoilers, so this will be a rather general commentary.

The science fictional ideas driving the story are fun and they are extrapolated beyond what is in the trailer, though only in the service of creating action-adventure sequences which consume most of the movie’s running time.

There also are frequent story-stopping lectures where people explain things to each other for the benefit of the audience — expository lumps as we say in sf. The filmmakers are afraid of losing the audience with (1) the exotic idea of how dreams can be invaded and manipulated, and (2) the multi-leveled action story. I thought they succeeded with (1) and were only partly effective with (2). Naturally I could always tell which action sequence we were in, they’re easily distinguishable visual environments. But as the film set up the climactic sequences I found myself questioning why certain events advanced the story, so I guess they partially lost me.

However, one storytelling aspect I admired, was creating a dream-invaders’ counterpart to post-traumatic stress disorder. That had the ring of truth to it.

The filmmakers must have counted on all the violent action to keep the movie from dragging, but not for me. I seriously considered leaving because by a certain point I figured I’d seen all the real story and they hadn’t made me care whether the best or worst case happened to the protagonist. I only stayed to satisfy my curiosity about the ending the filmmakers actually chose.

Bullsheet Bites the Dust

That was fast. I no sooner congratulate Edwina Harvey and Ted Scribner for scoring their hundredth issue of Australian SF Bullsheet than they announce in their next issue that the zine is going on indefinite hiatus.

Edwina and Ted took up the torch from founding editor Marc Ortlieb when he ended his 7-year tenure in 2002. Now Edwina offers “If someone else wants to ‘have a go’ at producing the Bullsheet every month, please contact us” through edwinafan (at) yahoo (dot) com.

[Source: Australian SF Bullsheet #101.]